Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a robot operation apparatus used for manually manipulating a robot, a robot system provided with the robot operation apparatus, and a robot operation program used for the robot system.
Related Art
In an industrial robot system, a robot can be manually operated (manual operation). Such operation is used, for example, in performing teaching. In this case, a user uses a pendant (teaching pendant), which is connected to a controller for controlling the robot, to manually operate the robot. For this purpose, the pendant is provided with various operation keys (e.g., keys composed of mechanical switches) (e.g., see JP-A-2006-142480).
The pendant includes a display which is typically provided with a touch panel that enables touch operation. If the manual operation can be conducted by touch operation by using such a touch panel, the dedicated operation keys are no longer needed to be provided. Thus, by enabling touch operation, the pendant is expected to be reduced in size (or increased in the screen size of the display) and reduced in cost. However, simply forming touch switches similar to the dedicated operation keys on the touch panel for replacement with the keys causes the problems as set forth below.
Specifically, in the case of physical operation keys, a user may be able to sense the keys by fingers to know the positions of the keys to be operated without looking at the pendant, although this may depend on the level of skill of the user. On the other hand, the positions of the touch switches formed on a touch panel cannot be sensed by fingers unlike the physical operation keys. In manually manipulating a robot, it is quite important for the sake of safety not to turn the user's eyes away from the robot, i.e. not to look at the pendant. However, when the operation keys are simply replaced with touch switches, the user needs to see the display of the pendant every time an operation is conducted. In such an occasion, the user cannot help turning his/her eyes away from the robot, which may lead to a concern that safety may be impaired.